Investigation Overview¶
In this investigation, I looked at the features which best profile each type of user. The main focus was on gender, age, ride day, ride time, duration and location.
Dataset Overview¶
The Ford GoBike system data includes information regarding about 180,000 individual rides made in a bike-sharing system covering the greater San Francisco Bay area in the United States, for the month of February, in the year, 2019. Bikeshare is designed for shorter duration trips. The bike-share system works by circulating—sharing—bikes between users. If a rider needs a bike for longer than 45 minutes, they can always check out a new bike mid-trip to complete their ride.
The Ford GoBike system data provides anonymized observations for rides including features such as the duration in seconds, the start and end station information, the user type; whether subscriber or customer, as well as some demographic information like birth year and gender. All data is based off free material from this link which was provided by Udacity.
How many types of users exist in the dataset and what are they?¶
There are 2 types of users in the dataset. They include Customers and Subscribers. Subscribers are residents with annual passes and Customers are visitors with 24-hour passes or three-day passes.(Wheretraveler.com).
How are the types of users distributed in the dataset?¶
Majority of trips were taken by Subscribers. Approximately 1 in every 10 trips, selected at random, was taken by a Customer.
What is the distrubution of gender for each type of user?¶
Majority of bike users in the San Francisco Bay Area are Male and for both user types, Males exceed Females. Most trips were taken by Male users but there were more male subscribers because majority of users are subscribers.
What age range has the highest trip frequency for each user type?¶
The distribution of age for Subscribers is bimodal while that of Customers is unimodal. Majority of trips by both Subscribers and Customers were taken by users within the age range of 25 to 35. Subscribers aged 26 and 31 made the most trips, with age 31 having the largest frequency. For Customers, majority of trips tend to be made by users aged 30.
What is the peak day for trips for each user type?¶
More trips occurred on a Thursday due to holidays but normally, the days of the week with the highest trip activity for Subscribers and Customers respectively are Tuesday and Friday. Also we can see that Subscribers take less trips on the weekend, i.e. Saturday and Sunday, while Customers have a relatively stable number of trips across the days.
What is the peak time for trips for each user type?¶
The distribution of the time of day for both users is bimodal. Subscribers took more trips at 8:00(8am), then the number of trips dropped drastically and then peaked again at 17:00(5pm). On the other hand for customers, although it has a similar distribution to that of subscribers, there are more stable changes. However, the highest peak for subscribers and customers respectively is 8am and 5pm.
Do any noticeable trends exist in the the relationship between duration and time of day for the different user types?¶
Customers generally take longer trips than subscribers. The line for customers is turbulent and there are three(3) peaks with the highest having a duration of about 18 minutes at 13:00(1pm) in the afternoon. On the other hand, the subscriber duration for each hour of the day is relatively consistent with no visible peaks.
What are the top stations for users?¶
The Powell St BART station is the most visited and most popuplar station for bike user trips. Also, the top 10 start stations and the top 10 end stations are the same albeit with some fluctuations in position.
Which station, from the top 10 stations, do each type of user type utilize more?¶
The postion of station changes based on the users. Although both subscribers and customers utilize the Powell St BART station more than other stations, the next option of station for subscribers and cusomers vary. Customers would rather use the station at the San Francisco Ferry Building as a second choice for trips while subscribers use the Market St at 10th St station.
How are the top stations distributed?¶
The stations are gathered in three clusters; one in Oakland, one in San Francisco and the last one in San Jose. Hence, the stations in the San Francisco bay area consists of stations in the cities; Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose. The top stations which both customers and subscribers use are particularly concentrated in the eastern part of San Francisco and are located in the same area.